


Six Feet Deep

by MaggieMaybe160



Series: SPN Headcanons [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Angst, Bad Parent John Winchester, Buried Alive, Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Flashbacks, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kid Sam Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Teen Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaggieMaybe160/pseuds/MaggieMaybe160
Summary: John Winchester is trying to prepare his boys for the worst by teaching them how to climb out of graves.
Series: SPN Headcanons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021630
Comments: 28
Kudos: 151





	Six Feet Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks [insominia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/insominia) for being there and cheering me on no matter how long or short the piece.

Dean is screaming. The wooden box he’s in is being nailed shut as his father tells him to keep calm. Sammy is crying which isn’t unusual for an eight-year-old who is watching his brother be nailed into a coffin. 

“Dean, listen to me,” his dad says calmly when he finishes hammering. “Slow your breaths, buddy. We’ve been over this. I have a timer. It’s just like playing in the dirt, bud.” 

“I’m scared!” Dean yells, pounding on the lid. 

“Then we have to do this until you’re not anymore.” His dad’s voice is muffled which doesn’t help. Dean feels himself being lifted and starts to cry, rubbing furiously at his face. 

Dirt rains down, pattering on the wood like rain on pavement. “Dad!” Dean screams in an attempt to make this all stop. It doesn’t. If anything, it speeds up. Sammy’s cries fade behind the dirt and Dean is locked into silence. It’s been pitch black since he was wrestled into this stupid box, but now he can’t hear anything. The silence presses in on him, suffocating him. 

“Help!” Dean cries out, thrashing and struggling against the walls that are closing in. “Help me!” He bangs on the lid and screams as loud as he can for as long as he can. When his lungs are out of air to scream, he stops. He lies completely still and focuses on his breaths. 

Dean’s chest barely moves as he takes his shallow breaths. He doesn’t notice that the breaths are becoming too quick and too shallow. He just knows that he’s no longer getting enough air. Panic seizes him but he doesn’t know what to do. He could try to gulp in all the air he possibly can, knowing his supply is short, or listen to what his father had told him and stay calm. Neither are options. He can’t breathe. He’s in a coffin. He is without help. 

“Somebody help me!” Dean screams as he begins to hyperventilate. He can feel tears streaming down his cheeks. “Help,” he tries, but his lungs won’t bring in any more air and it comes out as nothing more than a small whimpered word between frantic breaths. 

He thinks he woke up a few times before he got out, but it was hard to tell. He would blink blearily in the dark and panic again, quickly fading back to unconsciousness. When he wakes up, he’s lying on the grass in the field. The sun is beaming down on him, air is flowing freely into him, and his body is rejecting the trauma he just woke up from. He rolls to his side and throws up before falling back into the grass. 

“It’s okay,” his dad sighs. “It’s alright. We can try again another day.” 

He doesn’t want to try another day. He doesn’t want to try ever. “Okay,” he answers instead. 

_ Dean gasps, his tired soul re-entering his body. His eyes are open but he can’t see. Dread with an ounce of panic is all he can feel as he reaches into his pocket for his lighter. The flame lights up what he had feared. He’s in a coffin. Six feet deep. “Help!”  _

“What the hell happened?” Bobby’s voice is furious as Dean comes to in the backseat of the Impala. They have been trying again and again. He’s getting better. He’s busted through the lid on two different days. Today, he’d blacked out when the dirt rained into the coffin. “That’s not right. He’s just a boy, John!”

“Don’t tell me how to raise my kids.” 

Bobby lifts Dean out of the car and Dean keeps his eyes shut so he won’t have to talk about it. So he won’t have to pick between resting at Bobby’s and being put back in the ground again. He remains limp as his two dads fight. 

When he hears the Impala’s engine start, Dean sits bolt upright on the couch and runs to the window. “Dad!” He watches as he pulls away from the salvage yard. “No!” 

“Dean, you need to rest,” Bobby says as Dean throws open the front door and runs out into the yard. “Dean!”

“Dad!” Dean hollers. He trips and lands flat on his ass in the dirt. “I can do it. I can do it, Bobby.” 

“No one but him is askin’ you to, kid.” 

_ Dean pushes on the lid of the coffin and dirt seeps in through the cracks of the wood. He won’t make the same mistakes because his father isn’t on the other side of his grace with a stopwatch in his hand and a shovel in the other. He knows how to do this. He grips where he can and pushes up, preparing for the onslaught of dirt that will be there to rain down in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. _

Dean is twelve when he finally reaches the surface by himself. He reaches up and suddenly his hand breaks through the surface. It’s within reach. His nose is filled with dirt and his eyes have been closed since he broke through the coffin, but he’s almost there. He pulls himself out and drags in a much-needed breath before coughing up dirt. 

“I did it,” he pants, the cool grass against his cheek and the breeze soothing him. 

“You did,” his dad says. There is no congratulations or declaration of pride. “Get up.”

Dean pushes himself up and follows his dad to the car. Sam is doing his homework in the backseat, used to watching this happen so often that he’s desensitized to the torture. 

“I did it,” he says to Sam as he buckles himself into the passenger seat. 

“Alone?” Sam asks, looking up from his notebook. 

“Alone,” Dean says. He’s never felt like that word applied more than right now. 

_ The Earth is hugging Dean close, like a lost loved one. He’s surprised he can still manage to breathe. His mouth is dry, his lungs empty. He’s working on autopilot as he digs up. He was trained for this. He can shut off the panic as he swims upward through dirt and worms. He can worry about how he got out of Hell and woke up in a coffin when he makes out. How fucked up would it be if there was someone waiting there just to tell him to get up?  _

“What the fuck is that?” Dean asks when he walks into the yard of the abandoned cabin they’ve been squatting in for the past week. His dad looks over his shoulder.

“What the fuck does it look like? Didn’t think your memory was that bad, Dean,” he says, turning back to the coffin he’s building. 

“I’m not doing that shit again.” 

“You would if this was for you,” his dad says chillingly. “You do what I tell you to do and you know that. It’s to keep you boys safe. You know how to obey an order or do we have to do some drills to remind you?”

“No, sir,” Dean says, standing straighter. 

“Good.” The hammering continues. “This is for Sam.”

Dean isn’t sure how fast he runs, but he knows that the middle school is letting out in half an hour and he has to make it there before Sam walks home from school and straight into a coffin that he is sure to pass out in when he gets scared. The kid is only eleven. 

“Dean? What’s going on?” Sam asks when Dean walks up to him and drags him away from the school by his arm. “Dean!”

“Do you have any good hiding places here yet?” Dean asks. “When Dad and I fight, where do you go?”

“Are you and dad fighting?” he asks. Dean lets out a huff of frustration. “What’s going on?”

“Do you remember when Dad buried me?” Dean asks in a voice low enough to hide from anyone around. He glances at Sam whose eyes have widened into saucers. “Yeah.”

“I hide in the tree,” he finally says, voice shaking. Dean can think of only one tree that could fit an entire person inside of it. He doesn’t let go of Sam until he has him safely inside of the tree. His heart is pounding, but he can’t let it show. No one can know that he’s just as scared as the day he was the eleven-year-old being put in the ground. 

“Stay here and don’t make a fucking sound. Got it?” Dean watches until Sam nods and then he turns and leaves, heading back to the cabin to pretend to do the schoolwork that he never actually does. 

“Where’s your brother? He should be home right now,” his dad says when he walks in only a half an hour later. Dean shrugs without bothering to look up, but inside, his stomach is in knots and he’s forcing his breath to stay even. “Dean.”

“I don’t know,” he says too loudly. 

“Then help me find him,” John says. 

“Why are you doing this? I had to do it and I’ve never needed it,” Dean argues, getting up and facing his father. “He’s just a kid.” 

“Tell me where your brother is and don’t you dare question me again.” Dean takes the slap to the face and the followup punch that tears his lip. The beatings for disobedience and frustration were easier to take than the guilt he would live with if he let Sam go down in that coffin. 

“You told me to keep Sammy safe!” Dean yells as his dad leaves the room to try to find Sam. “I’m doing my damn job!” 

“You tell me where he is or you will be sorry.” The threat is meaningless. Dean grinds his teeth together and runs after him. 

“Stop!” Dean yells. He shoves his dad and succeeds in only making him stumble. He turns around and fixes Dean with a surprised and angry look. Dean swallows hard and stands his ground. “Stop.” He doesn’t see the next hit coming, but he takes it, lifting his arms to protect his face. 

“Dean!” Sam yells. He’s never actually seen Dean get hit. He’s always hidden, running from the room when the yelling would start. He was never actually there when things got physical. And Dean had tried to keep it that way. 

Dean has fistfuls of his father’s jacket as Sam is dragged toward the coffin. “No!” Dean punches and kicks but it leads nowhere. 

“You boys need to learn how to do this. Dean did it and you will too. And while you work out how to make it out, Dean will learn how to obey his father like the soldier he is.” Sam is thrown into the coffin, the lid slammed shut. “Did you two forget that your mother was killed by a demon? Did you forget what I’m trying to teach you boys? Is soccer camp more important than killing every evil son of a bitch that gets in our way of finding your mother’s killer?” 

“She’s gone!” Dean yells. His dad grabs Dean by the collar and shoves him up against a tree, their faces close. Dean swallows hard. 

“Don’t talk about her like that!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Dean rushes. He’s let go and he falls to the floor. The kick to the side of the head is what does him in. When he opens his eyes, Sammy is screaming as dirt is piled on top of him. 

  
_ Dean pushes through the surface and crawls out as he rakes fresh air into his lungs. No one is there with a stopwatch and a shovel. No one is there with the admission that they were whatever the hell had raised him from the depths of Hell. No one is there. The trees around him are flattened to the ground, but no one is around for ages. Dean is alone.  _


End file.
